Search results

Farmer sentiment may be an important indicator for the agricultural sector, similar to the way that consumer sentiment is linked to the general economy. This study uses the Purdue University–CME Group Ag Economy Barometer to test the degree to which farmer sentiment is correlated with demand for United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (FSA) direct loan applications.

We estimate the dynamics between farmer sentiment and applications to FSA direct operating or farm ownership loans using monthly measures of farmer sentiment and loan applications from October 2015 to April 2023 and pairwise vector autoregression.

A negative relationship exists between farmer sentiment and FSA direct operating loan applications. In contrast, a positive relationship exists between farmer sentiment and FSA direct farm ownership loan applications. Together, the estimated nonzero relationships suggests that the Ag Economy Barometer may be a leading indicator for the Agricultural Economy and that FSA loan programs play a nuanced role in the agricultural credit market.

This study uses unique data sources to further the discussion on the link between farmer sentiment and real economic outcomes and the role of an important US Federal Government farmer lending program: FSA direct loans.

After working on the assignment questions, the learners can achieve the following learning outcomes: understand the buying behavior towards sustainable products in the context of mindful consumption and product characteristics, appraise the market segmentation and positioning strategy of a sustainable business, understand the application of 5C’s framework for a sustainable business and critically evaluate a new sustainable business’s challenges in the emerging business environment.

Dr Joe Fenn, founder and director of PFoods, with extensive experience in the pharma industry overseas, observed a decline in the consumption of traditional dairy foods. Alternative plant foods come as a savior to people who are lactose intolerant and offer a host of health benefits with low environmental impact. Riding on the waves of veganism and sustainable foods, he saw an opportunity in India. PFoods developed and launched two products, namely, Just Plants (plant-based milk alternative) and Plotein (plant-based protein alternative), in collaboration with scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, a premier scientific institution in India, and PMEDS (PreEmptive Meds), a US-based nutraceutical Company. PFoods launched and pilot-tested Just Plant, a dairy alternative substitute for milk in select reputed organizations in Bangalore. The upcoming challenges for Fenn would be to select the right segment, educate the market and position the product that would resonate well with the target customers.

The case study suits undergraduate and graduate courses such as marketing management, sustainable marketing and sustainable business. The case study can also be used in entrepreneurship management and entrepreneurial marketing courses to introduce the challenges of a sustainable startup. The case study highlights the marketing challenges faced by the disruptive and growing plant-based foods or alternative dairy industry in emerging markets.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

This study aims to examine the impact of Lean 4.0 practices on value co-creation in the dairy ecosystem.

Data collection were carried out through a questionary application with 126 professionals linked to the dairy ecosystem, including milk producers, milk cooperatives and milk transporters. The data were analyzed using Cluster Analysis, Mann-Whitney test and Chi-Square test.

A strong relation was found between the use of Lean 4.0 tools and the increase in operational performance, in addition to milk quality. Moreover, it can be noted that the use of digital technologies from Industry 4.0 has a strong relation with dairy production optimization, in other words, it is possible to be more efficient in the dairy process via Lean 4.0 adoption.

The study is limited to analyzing the Brazilian dairy ecosystem. The results presented may not reflect the characteristics of the other countries.

Once the potential empirical impacts of the relation between Lean 4.0 and value co-creation are elucidated, it is possible to direct strategies for decision-making and guide efforts by researchers and professionals to deal with the waste mitigation present in the dairy sector.

Lean 4.0 proves to be a potential solution to improve the operational performance of the dairy production system. Lean 4.0, linked to value co-creation, allows the integration of the production sector with consumers, through smart technologies, so new services and experiences can be provided to the consumer market. Additionally, the consumer experience can be stimulated based on Lean 4.0, once the quality specification is highlighted based on data science and smart management control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyzes the interrelationship between the Lean 4.0 philosophy and the value co-creation in the dairy ecosystem. In this sense, the study reveals the main contributions of this interrelation to the dairy sector via value co-creation, which demonstrates a new perspective on the complementarity of resources, elimination of process losses and new experiences for the user through digital technologies integrated with the Lean Thinking approach.

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on low-carbon consumption of dairy products through informational interventions. The empirical findings seek to enlighten developing countries' efforts in coping with climate change and potential dietary transitions.

A randomized controlled trial was designed to examine the effects of purpose-differentiated information interventions on individual dairy consumption. The experiment recruited and randomly assigned 1,002 college students into four groups to receive (or not) environmental or/and health information interventions.

The empirical analysis finds that health and combined information interventions have a positive impact on dairy consumption, while environmental information interventions' effect on dairy consumption is insignificant. In the context of the pandemic, health information interventions positively affected participants' perceptions and preferences for dairy products by delivering knowledge about their role in boosting immunity. However, environmental information interventions failed to do the same things as their insignificant effects on both perception and preference.

Macro-external shocks, such as public health events, may offset the impact of universal information interventions promoting pro-environmental behaviors. For a smooth dietary transition to achieve long-term environmental sustainability, diverse stakeholders must be included in more individualized interventions to guide daily consumption, especially in developing countries with large populations.

Milk is a perishable food product, one of the primary sources of nutrition. Reports worldwide indicate numerous food frauds and foodborne diseases associated with adulterated milk products. These safety concerns highlight the importance of a visible milk supply chain, which can be achieved by cutting-edge technologies. However, these technologies come with high costs. So, this study aims to propose a framework that integrates blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud to enhance visibility with reduced cost in an Australian milk supply chain (AMSC).

A design science research methodology is used, where a proof of concept is also developed at the retailer end to show how blockchain, IoT and cloud can improve visibility with reduced cost in an AMSC.

According to cost and visibility analysis, blockchain implementation in AMSC would generate a high return on investment (ROI). For the given case, ROI becomes positive for all stakeholders after 750 cycles. Integrating IoT, cloud and blockchain is more profitable than just using blockchain. Additionally, technology implementation may not benefit all stakeholders equally. For example, the retailer needs 10 cycles to benefit, but the transporter needs 50 in the given case.

The findings of this study assist milk industries in decision-making regarding technology implementation in their supply chain and motivate them to implement these technologies, resulting in improved trust and coordination among entities and consumers.

A cost and visibility analysis are performed to evaluate the impact of technology implementation on cost and visibility in an AMSC. A SOAR (Strength Opportunities Aspiration Results) analysis is also performed for the strategic planning framework.

Qatar, a wealthy country with an open economy has limited arable land. To meet its domestic food demand, the country heavily relies on food imports. Additionally, the over three year-long economic embargo enforced by regional neighbors and the covariate shock of the COVID-19 pandemic have demonstrated the country's vulnerability to food insecurity and potential for structural breaks in macroeconomic data. The purpose of this paper is to examine short- and long-run determinants of Qatar's imports of aggregate food, meats, dairy and cereals in the presence of structural breaks.

The authors use 24 years of food imports, gross domestic product (GDP) and consumer price index (CPI) data obtained from Qatar's Planning and Statistics Authority. They use the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration framework and Chambers and Pope's exact nonlinear aggregation approach.

Unit root tests in the presence of structural breaks reveal a mixture of I (1) and I (0) variables for which standard cointegration techniques do not apply. The authors found evidence of a significant long-run relationship between structural changes and food imports in Qatar. Impulse response functions indicate full adjustments within three-quarters of a year in the event of an exogenous shock to imports.

An exogenous shock of one standard deviation on this variable would reduce Qatar's food imports by about 2.5% during the first period but recover after the third period.

The failure of past aggregate food demand studies to go beyond standard unit root testing creates considerable doubt about the accuracy of their elasticity estimates. The authors avoid that to provide more credible findings.

The growth of lending from nontraditional lenders may pose challenges for official US Department of Agriculture (USDA) farm sector debt estimates, but it is difficult to find data to assess official estimates. The purpose of this study is to examine whether debt provided by nontraditional lenders is accurately accounted for in official estimates.

We compare traditional and nontraditional lending data from farm equipment lien collateral values and the USDA Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). After analyzing trends in equipment lending implied by farm equipment lien data and ARMS, we estimate whether changes in farm equipment lien values predict changes in equipment debt reported in ARMS and whether lender type influences that relationship.

We find that credit provided by nontraditional lenders is likely underreported in ARMS. Our econometric model shows that equipment debt volumes for nontraditional lenders are consistently lower than traditional loan volumes in ARMS across a variety of model specifications. We also find that an increase in lien values for nontraditional lenders is less likely to predict an increase in ARMS equipment debt volumes than an increase for traditional lenders.

Official farm sector debt estimates may not fully account for nontraditional lenders.

This study demonstrates how the growth of nontraditional lending poses challenges for estimating US farm sector debt. We evaluate farm sector debt estimates and advance knowledge of the role of nontraditional lenders in farm equipment credit provision. The farm equipment lien dataset provides a rich source of novel data for research on local and national equipment debt and investment.

Estimation of (in)efficiency became a popular practice that witnessed applications in virtually any sector of the economy over the last few decades. Many different models were deployed for such endeavors, with Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) models dominating the econometric literature. Among the most popular variants of SFA are Aigner, Lovell, and Schmidt (1977), which launched the literature, and Kumbhakar, Ghosh, and McGuckin (1991), which pioneered the branch taking account of the (in)efficiency term via the so-called environmental variables or determinants of inefficiency. Focusing on these two prominent approaches in SFA, the goal of this chapter is to try to understand the production inefficiency of public hospitals in Queensland. While doing so, a recognized yet often overlooked phenomenon emerges where possible dramatic differences (and consequently very different policy implications) can be derived from different models, even within one paradigm of SFA models. This emphasizes the importance of exploring many alternative models, and scrutinizing their assumptions, before drawing policy implications, especially when such implications may substantially affect people’s lives, as is the case in the hospital sector.

This study aims to explore the use of knowledge sharing (KS) in delivering open social innovation (OSI) solutions for sustainable development in the context of economically marginalized, rural societies in India.

The study is guided by an exploratory, qualitative approach using an embedded case study design with four social enterprises. The study approaches the use of KS in three stages of OSI: (1) the stages of ideating and prototyping, (2) the initial stages of experimenting and business development and (3) the more current and future-oriented stages of organizations’ strategies for expanding market opportunities for maximizing impact.

The first stage used KS for collaborative efforts among diverse stakeholders to recognize the needs of marginalized people and ideate suitable ecological solutions. The social enterprises acted as orchestrators in this stage. The second stage involved a more dynamic role of KS in the refinement of social enterprises’ market offerings, generating additional innovations and value propositions, which diversified the scope of the social enterprises. This was facilitated by enterprises’ ability to be open systems, which change and evolve through OSI processes and KS. In the third stage, social enterprises’ use of KS was shifted towards future business development by expanding market opportunities with solutions that tackle complex societal and ecological problems, thereby contributing to sustainable development goals.

The present study contributes to studies on OSI, focusing on sustainable development and the role played by social enterprises operating in rural, economically marginalized areas, which have been an understudied phenomenon in the open innovation literature.

The authors aimed to identify the opinions of young adult consumers regarding food processing companies’ (FPCs) credibility in terms of food safety (FS).

The authors surveyed Generation Z (GenZ) consumers. The authors assessed the reliability of the research questionnaire using Cronbach’s alpha statistics. The authors used descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA analysis of variance in the data analysis to determine intergroup variability. The authors performed statistical analyses using IBM SPSS Statistics. 27.

The most valued determinants for consumers were competence and skills, and the most valued family members’ opinions on FS, followed by experts’ opinions. FS concerns are more associated with FPCs than with farmers. The ethics of conduct and moral responsibility play an important role in assessing the FPCs’ credibility.

The questionnaire did not focus on specific food industries, such as fruit and vegetables, fish, meat, dairy, etc. In the future, a similar survey on producers’ credibility should consider the issue of FS risks associated with the specifics of a particular industry.

The authors proposed a set of factors that may determine young adult consumers’ perception of the FPCs’ credibility, which they may use for research within other consumer groups.